Could Alzheimer's be a Fourth type of diabetes?

Some researchers say yes. The disease that affects millions of Americans — Alzheimer's — is actually "type 3" diabetes, not a separate condition, some say.

In clinical practice today, there are three types of diabetes: type 1, which has no known cause or cure and is typically diagnosed in childhood; type 2, called the "lifestyle" diabetes, though it is also caused by ethnicity and family history; and gestational, which strikes pregnant women and in 90 percent of cases goes away after women give birth.

But as food writer and health advocate Mark Bittman writes in a recent New York Times op-ed, the idea that Alzheimer's is actually just another form of diet-induced diabetes was introduced in 2005 by neuropathologist and professor at Brown Medical School, Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH. In her research, de la Monte demonstrated that levels of insulin and its receptors diminish significantly in the brain during early Alzheimer's — and this trend continues as the disease progresses.

"And many of the unexplained features of Alzheimer's, such as cell death and tangles in the brain, appear to be linked to abnormalities in insulin signaling. This demonstrates that the disease is most likely a neuroendocrine disorder, or another type of diabetes," she wrote in a press release when the study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

The "why" makes sense once you know how insulin works. Insulin is how your body regulates blood sugar — it prompts cells to pick up sugar from your blood and use that sugar as energy. When you eat a high-fat, high-sugar diet (as many Americans do), the cells are overwhelmed by all the sugar and stop reacting well to insulin. This is called insulin resistance, a condition that if left untreated, leads to type 2 diabetes.

All the sugar that's left in your blood stream by insulin resistance then wreaks havoc over the rest of your body, causing heart disease, nerve damage, eye damage, and more. When this damage reaches your brain cells, you lose memory function and become disoriented. Or in other words, some researchers say, you develop Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's and diabetes rates are both on the rise. And as the population ages, Alzheimer's disease rates will "escalate rapidly in coming years," the Alzheimer's Association reports. It's believed that Alzheimer's is brought on by a combination of genetics, environmental, and lifestyle factors — but the type 3 diabetes idea adds new credence to the suggestion that diet and exercise, more than any other factor, can prevent Alzheimer's.

The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, walnuts, and flaxseed have been shown to decrease risk of cognitive decline, as have the antioxidants in fruits, vegetables, and tea — foods that have all been shown to help prevent type 2 diabetes. The answer, healthy eating advocates like Bittman say, is adopting a "sane" diet full of plants, and low in saturated fat and sugar to head off cognitive decline, diabetes, and the host of negative side effects that come with.

1 reply

I don't know but it make sense. I hope they find out for sure. I do know my mother in law has had dementia for a few years. She has alzheimer's they say, still just repeats a lot everyday, and can't remember much as far as short term memory, and her diet was not good for many years, and for many years she was overweight mostly in the tummy area and never ever exercised. So in her case, maybe this has lead to it, but then again, her father had alzheimer's. Perhaps liike diabetes, you can have the gene for it, but it is turned "on" by a bad diet and little or no exercise over years. She also had high cholesterol and high blood pressure and is still on those medications even though she started eating better and lost all the weight, I think she is still on them or at least the cholesterol meds. who knows. But this is interesting.